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For those who have been trafficked into the EU to work in agriculture it's a case of strawberry Fields, forever.

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 88%. (I'm a bot)

> Abusive conditions are endemic in parts of Spain's fruit sector, a new report alleges, with workers telling the Guardian they have been regularly underpaid and forced to live in dilapidated shacks.

> The result is that the women were highly vulnerable to exploitation and less likely to report abusive situations, said Silvina Gorsky, a sociologist who works with a group of lawyers in Andalusia that provides legal assistance to workers.

> While there were companies in Huelva's strawberry fields that paid their workers fairly, these companies were a minority, said José Antonio Brazo, of Soc-Sat, a local farmworkers' union that fielded more than 1,000 complaints in Huelva related to exploitation and working conditions in 2019.

Extended Summary | FAQ | Feedback | Top keywords: work^#1 year^#2 Huelva^#3 report^#4 farm^#5

similiar situation here in Australia with foreign workers on farms.

It's a modern serfdom. Common in many countries. Even Europe. For example check Netherlands.

Of course most people don't know that their countries are sustained through similar acts.

Sad reality.

We're all propped up by slavery in one way or another

I wonder if Spain’s ever done what America does and uses trafficked kids from south of the border? Works for us.

Abusive working conditions endemic in general Spain is equally as fitting

Yeah it's a real plague for the sea people

Has been known for some time now. There is no interest to stop it, it seems.

There were reports of abuse of non European workers in the agriculture industry of Finland, Netherlands, ... here in this sub if I remember correctly.

Fuck.

Same kind of issues being reported from Finnish strawberry farms and wild berry industry.

The worst "strawberry barons" cry in the news that Finns don't want to work in the industry because it's physically demanding and the payment is low.

Post-Brexit there was a big push to get Brits working on the farms again. If the pay wasn't abysmal there'd be a requirement to live on-site and off-site applicants wouldn't be considered...like, what? If I like 30 minutes down the road with my family I'm not going to move out for the damn season just so I can pay the farmer extra rent.

And then it's 'Brits just don't want these jobs!'

I remember driving through Almeria a couple of summers ago. It was shocking. Hundreds of small shacks, stuck together, made with black plastic, under the scorching sun, Almería is often over 35°c the hottest months and even over 40°c many days. Stuck in the middle of miles of fields, no facilities nearby. And mostly African men working in the fields. It was like landing in another era. It is pure slavery. Us European's vegetable and fruit garden. Nice and cheap and tucked away were we don't really have to see it or think about it.

This is no news. We all know about it and won’t stop till the process uses robots instead.

Without those workers strawberries would be very expensive though. Maybe I, or someone else, will try to build a robot specialized in plucking strawberries to solve this issue

Migrants being abused by farmers? That’s a tale as old as time.

I guarantee it’s not just strawberries and it’s definitely not just Spain…

The cherry on top of this strawberry muffin is the recurring question about better wages, the answer is the same "Better wages aren't the solution for people not wanting to do a low paying job!"

The same argument is used when nurses try to negotiate better wages to get enough nurses to keep the Finnish healthcare system running.

Would strawberries be very expensive if more people were growing them at home? If you have a pot and a sunny corner, you can grow strawberries indoors (and a lot of other stuff, albeit in smaller quantities than if you have a yard). Bring back gardening, I say.

This is what the EU wants though. Borderline slave labour. It's their main selling point, "free movement".

Yes and no. For easy to grow varieties best you can get is 400-500grams of fruit per plant, so if you want anything close to a yield you need more than a pot of dirt, at least small plot of land with couple dozens of plants.

Ditto over the ditch in NZ.

I know farmers weren't happy when we shut down and didn't allow them to import cheap workers to exploit.

My family used to have a patch with maybe 30 plants in like 4 sqm of our small out-of-town garden plot. We had so many strawberries! We'd bring home buckets at a time and make jams for winter. It was great.

Now I buy maybe 1kg / year because they are so expensive. After the experience of growing our own food some 25 years ago, I can't justify the current prices at all. Unfortunately, I currently suck at gardening on my balcony, but it's a learning process.

I guess what I'm saying is... We humans don't actually need all that much.